Tobacco vs. Alcohol vs. Marijuana
So let’s review. Tobacco? Adversely impacts lung function, and perfectly legal. Binge drinking of alcohol? Common, dangerous, and costly to society. Also, totally legal. Marijuana? No impact on lung function, and known beneficial effects. Usually illegal.
Marijuana may have no impact on lung function but its excessive consumption has other direct consequences such as getting high, addiction (that lead to much more harm to the consumer and their surroundings), unlike tobacco.
@Keith I’m not a proponent of use and don’t agree with Carroll but surely you mispoke when you said “marijuana causes addiction…unlike tobacco.” Neither marijuana or tobacco are chemically addictive; the difference is that tobacco contains nicotine, a highly addictive chemical. Tobacco users also cause greater harm to their surroundings. Second-hand tobacco smoke is full of carcinogens.
I do, however, think the JAMA study is off-base. Perhaps the degree of lung damage is overstated by some other groups but there is NO way one could continually inhale smoke (of anything that is being burned, legal or illegal) without damaging their lung functions.
One JAMA article and marijuana has no adverse physiological effects?
Marijuana use has been associated with an increased risk of psychotic outcomes, motor vehicle crashes, cognative deficits (some of which go away after abstaining for a month or so), and dose-related impairment of large airway function resulting in airflow obstruction and hyperinflation (Thorax, 2007).
Whether is should be legal is a different debate.
The evidence that second hand tobacco smoke is dangerous is not especially convincing despite great effort to make it so. And, Viscusi has shown, tobacco users cost “society” less because they die earlier.
Binge drinking harms society? By the definition given, a huge fraction of adults are binge drinkers on any given summer holiday, not to mention New Year’s Eve and the Super Bowl.
Alcoholism is bad news, but the author doesn’t bother to make any link between supposedly harmful “binge drinking” and alcoholism. Nor does he address the results suggesting that moderate alcohol consumption may have health benefits.
I cannot debate the relative demerits of the aforementioned addictive substances. But I know some people who would probably be more tolerable if they smoked a doobie or two ever so often. They might even be more sociable if they engaged in moderate (but not excessive) drinking occasionally.
Davie, one thing I would point out is this: There are people who have smoked a pack a day well into their 80s who did not have impaired lung function. Others have died in their 50s from smoking-caused emphysema.
Whether we are talking about habitual smoking of tobacco, cannabis, or chronic drinking, what matters so much that studies often ignore is that people are different. Some people can handle it, some cannot, and become addicted or suffer health consequences. With respect to narcotics, some become a danger to others/society while using them, others do not. Some abuse drugs, others use occasionally.
I’m not sure that I find the “cost to society” argument to be extraordinarily compelling – there are far too many exorbitant costs out there for me to get riled about one in particular. I will just insert that classic point that it is not so much Americans that pay the price for our “moral” stance against marijuana, but millions of Mexicans who live in a nation that is bordering on a failed state. Legalization undercuts cartels in a way that the DEA never could.
Given how many people smoke it on a regular basis and live normal lives, I think it’s probably in the same category as alcohol and tobacco.
The potential tax base from legalizing pot is probably the biggest argument one can make regarding its legalization. At some point, you would think that states would want to cash in on the extra funds.